


State of Mind

by pir8fancier



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pir8fancier/pseuds/pir8fancier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco Malfoy's mother has died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, not sure where this is going, but inspired by an exchange with khalulu.

The owl was most unexpected. I stared at it for a few seconds and reread it four times, making sure that my initial impression had been correct. Yes, the owl was from Potter, and, yes, he was offering sympathy regarding the death of my mother. Three decades later, nearly to the day after Potter had plucked me out of that raging inferno, I still wasn't sure how I felt about Harry Potter. I doubt I'll _ever_ know. Potter was a problematic bugger, always had been. Although the owl of condolence was bizarre enough, Potter had added a postscript, offering to take me out for a drink at some point to extend his condolences. What in the HELL did that mean? 

******************************

While walking away from her grave, with Scorpius leaning on one arm and Astoria the other, I wanted to shout, "Who is going to carry me? Who is going to support _me_ when I cannot walk another fucking step by myself?" But I didn't. The funeral itself had been limited to family, but people had been invited for drinks after the burial, so I postponed my meltdown until later.

Circulating around the room, refreshing drinks for those whose glasses were nearly empty, and instructing the house elves to pass the food, etc., I played host. Not many people had shown up. Being the widow of a prominent Death Eater didn't elicit much sympathy. In fact, Potter's note was the only acknowledgment outside of the family and my personal friends that I'd received. Not a single person had shown up when we'd buried my father, but then if I'd been given a choice, I'd have spent the day at the Leaky getting completely soused.

I'd decided to hold the wake in the library so that it would seem like more people were paying their respects than actually were. Everyone from my mother's bridge club had turned up, all of whom had hollow legs; the amount of alcohol they'd consumed over the course of an hour was truly impressive. My Aunt Andromeda hadn't come. The only relationship destroyed in the war that my mother had truly mourned, my aunt had refused to speak to my mother since Tonks' death. I'd owled Andromeda a personal note telling her when and where the funeral and wake were to take place. She didn't reply. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose your only child so I didn't judge her.

This was exceedingly maudlin, but it seemed to me that the people who had survived the war weren't living as long as previous generations. Were we just worn out? I had to admit I felt rather worn out these days. I had a hard time imagining myself at seventy, my mother's age when she had died; my great-grandfather had lived to be one-hundred-and-fifty years old.

If that didn't say it all.

The Parkinsons came, very tottery and a little gaga. I wanted to klonk Pansy over the head with a serving tray because she has never had much fashion sense, and she had showed up wearing an outfit that made her look like an aging prostitute; but I didn't. The elder Greengrasses kept to a corner of the room, clutching their drinks and leaving as soon as it was polite. Daphne was being a brick as usual, tacitly understanding that it was her job to make sure that Scorpius and Astoria were okay while I played host. I liked her, and it bothered me that she didn't like me. Three years ago Theodore had denounced magic and had become a Catholic priest, so obviously he'd been a no-show. Blaise? God knows. He hadn't bother to respond to my owl. Neither Greg or Vince had survived the war, so obviously they weren't there and neither were their parents; they'd perished in the battle of Hogwarts. Hindsight had forced me to admit that Vince and Greg were little more than thugs, their joint I.Q.'s never reaching more than about forty on a good day. Still, they'd been my thugs. The death of a parent forces you to revisit your childhood memories, and the three of us had been inseparable as boys. I kept turning around expecting to see them standing there.

Finally it was only me, Astoria, and Scorpius, who had loved his grandmother very much, but who was itching to get back to Romania. I could tell from the minute jerks of his knee going back and forth in a tight rhythm. Scorpius hadn't inherited my tendency toward nervous tics, so obviously something was going on. I was itching to grab him by the shoulders and shake him for being such a selfish git, but I didn't. In a quiet, firm voice I assured Scorpius that Astoria and I were fine, and why didn't he return to Romania? I didn't say ‘return home,' because to me the Manor would always be Scorpius' home even if that was no longer true. The relief on his face was so obvious as to be extremely hurtful, but I swallowed, gave him a hug, and managed to maintain a wan smile until I felt the whoosh of air from the Portkey.

Astoria and I resumed our day to day. If my mother had been a bridge aficionado, then Astoria was a bridge fiend. It was the only thing she and my mother had had in common. The _only_ thing besides me. Mother hadn't actively disliked her; it was more that she didn't have an opinion one way or another, despite the fact that Astoria and I had been married for over two decades. The only remotely complimentary thing my mother had ever said about Astoria was that she knew how to bid. That was it. I was sure that she deplored Astoria's parenting skills. Despite endless discussions between me and Astoria about how even though Scopius was an only child, we mustn't spoil him, it was all just talk. We spoiled him rotten. I considered it a miracle that Scorpius had been a rather nice child and was an even nicer adult. As my mother's own parenting skills couldn't be held up to any scrutiny, wisely she said nothing.

Astoria spent her mornings tearing through cheap romance novels and her afternoons playing bridge. I was mystified as to why she'd become a rather vapid woman, because she hadn't been like that when we were first married; I had a sinking suspicion that this was my fault, but damned if I knew why. I couldn't criticize her because my day was equally inane. I made money. I'd always been something of a god at Arithmancy, and about five years ago I'd started dabbling in the American stock market. I didn't need to even use magic. I read _People_ magazine cover to cover every week and based my entire trading strategy on Hollywood gossip. Whatever the magazine said was true, I assumed was false and merely the lies of some overworked P.R. hack. I only traded in entertainment stocks. I'd made so much money in the last year that even _I_ acknowledged it was obscene. But I needed to do something with my days, so I continued to play the market even as I wondered if there was any point. 

Since my mother's illness and inevitable death, Astoria had made a plausible effort in hiding her now-standard indifference to me. She gave me a nightly hug and a kiss on the forehead, but then she'd always head off to her bedroom. We hadn't slept together in years. There were limits to her sympathy. Besides, I might be emotionally gutted, but I wasn't at the point where pity fucks were the order of the day. 

A week after my mother's death, Astoria kissed my forehead and headed off to her bedroom as usual. At the sound of her door shutting, I paused at the door to my bedroom and had to stop myself from breaking down. Great hulking sobs filled my chest cavity with nowhere to go. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was having a heart attack. Gripping the door jamb so tightly that I bruised all the fingers of my right hand, the moment passed. 

I'd just realized that my mother's death now meant I had no one to talk to. I didn't even bother to undress. I got into bed and burrowed under the covers so that I was in total darkness.

  * Theo had obvious gone around the twist. It wasn't the Catholic business that irritated me. In fact, transfiguration versus transubstantiation? Not much difference in my book. But when I'd pointed this out, Theo's forehead had turned an unhealthy shade of purple and then he began shouting at me that I was the spawn of the devil. Which was more or less true, except that Theo wasn't actually referring to Lucius. The most galling aspect of this whole business as far as I was concerned was Theo's continued insistence that magic didn't exist. At our last meeting, I had had enough and had transfigured Theo's teacup into a cow patty and then had Apparated back home. There were limits to how much crazy I was willing to put up with, and Theo had crossed that line and then some.
  * There was Millicent, but I'd never liked her. Well, no, that's wrong. I just couldn't stand being around her. She was as thick as two planks and navigating her stupidity was often exhausting. It was like talking to a child, except that she had none of the charm of a child. She was a forty-three-year old women who wore ratty cardigans and the ugliest shoes imaginable, and had an enumerable number of Yorkies who she'd named in honor of dead Bulstrode house-elves. Plus her hair always needed a good scrub. It's an effort, but I can turn a blind eye to poor grooming habits (Greg had a pathological aversion to water). Unfortunately, in addition to needing a bath and a decent wardrobe, she was boring as all fuck. She'd never married and her Ministry job consisted of collecting obscure statistics that no one ever bothered to look at. In the next Ministry reorg she would be made redundant. She'd been doing this for thirty years. No one wanted to hear about the increase in the ratio of toilets to square footage in any given magical dwelling over the last fifty years. Still I felt sorry for her because when she lost that job--which she would, it was only a matter of time--she would have no place to go during the day. Out of guilt I take her out to lunch twice a year, where she always has far too much to drink, and which hints at lonely evenings where she drinks her dinner five nights out of seven.
  * Pansy, who had moved to New York several years earlier, was the mistress of a cauldron tycoon who will never marry her. We didn't see each other very often because she kept asking me for advice, and I kept telling her to leave her "benefactor" because she was his Wednesday-night fuck and that's all she would ever be. At some point she throws her drink in my face. It's always the same question and always the same advice, and the intervals between our get-togethers were getting longer and longer, just as Pansy kept getting older and older. The tycoon would be trading her in for a younger model soon. Like Millicent, one didn't need a crystal ball to see Pansy's future.
  * Blaise had disappeared, not even having the grace to write a note in response to my owl. Had Blaise had finally found a rich Muggle woman to support him in the style to which he wanted to be accustomed? Blaise was a formidable wizard, but magic had never really meant much to him. What caused Blaise's wand to stand up straight was money. Pounds or Galleons, it really didn't matter. Like mother, like son.
  * Sadly, despite marrying into the Greengrass family, Daphne only tolerated me for Astoria and Scorpius' sake. The happiest day of her life would be the day Astoria walked out on me, and given the state of my marriage, that will be soon.
  * Astoria? No, I couldn't even count on pointless chit-chat with Astoria. Unless it was something to do with Scorpius, Astoria and I hadn't had a real conversation in years. I suspected that Astoria had planned on leaving me months ago, and then Mother got sick and then had the nerve to die. No decent person leaves a man whose mother is dying, and Astoria is nothing if not decent. Now that my mother had died, she would wait six months and then move out. It was inevitable. Not that it would make that much difference, perhaps none.



Except for my weekly Firecalls with Scorpius, I could literally stop talking and no one would notice. And even those weekly sessions were getting shorter and shorter. Scorpius had better things to do with his time. Like training dragons and fucking Charlie Weasley twice a night. The two of them lived in hovel in Romania where I doubted they even had hot running water.

I couldn't help but smile. I could just imagine my mother's response if I were to utter this thought in her presence. She would look up from her book--but not until she marked the page with her pinky finger--and say to me in a voice that brooked no argument, "Don't be ridiculous, Draco. You know for a fact they have hot running water, and Charles Weasley makes Scorpius happy." She would then go back to her book. If she were she alive, which, sadly, she was not.

Both the Malfoys and Weasleys have acknowledged the utter improbability of this relationship, and yet no one can deny that Scorpius and Charlie Weasley seem so suited to each other that the term "soul mates" is bandied about without any accompanying sniggers. Yes, as much as I hated to admit it, that Weasley fellow _did_ make Scorpius happy.

Happy is not a word I would use to describe the general Malfoy state of being, In fact, I would have said that a deep, horrible unhappiness had been so overwhelming for so many years that I couldn't remember the family ever being happy. Certainly not since the day my father had been chucked into Azkaban, but it seemed that even before that the word hadn't applied. I'm not sure what word _did_ , but happy wasn't it.

Had I been happy as a child? Not that I could remember. I was always wanting and then getting but it was never enough and not what I really wanted, although Merlin knows what I really wanted. It was all so confusing. The years at Hogwarts don't even bear consideration. I can't even think of my seventh year without throwing up. Literally. As an adult? I've had happy moments. I suppose I was happy when I got married, but from the distance of the years, it seems like that happiness happened to someone else, not me. I was most definitely happy, ecstatic even, when Scorpius was born. But inherently happy? No, I basically stole what happiness I could from Scorpius, and then once Scorpius went to school, he took happiness with him; I was only happy during the summer, those two weeks at Easter, and at Christmas. It was like I was able to steal happiness for a while, but then I had to give it back at King's Cross Station. Not that I was complaining. That child had saved me. In my very, very dark moments I wondered why my existence hadn't saved my father as Scorpius' existence had saved me.

Sometimes I felt guilty that Astoria and I were only happy as a couple when we were with Scorpius; it was a separate happiness, not a joint one. Was this my fault? I didn't know. What had she seen in me? I couldn't say. What had I seen in her? I mentally squinted and reached backbackback into my memories, and all I could come up with was that she'd been very pretty and had a rather nice laugh. How depressing to acknowledge that I couldn't remember why I'd married my wife. Christ. I had truly loved my mother. Did I love my wife? I honestly didn't know. I watched her writing a letter to Scorpius, the fall of her dark hair against the red of her sweater, and the quill gliding across the page, her handwriting a confection of swirls and flourishes, feminine and quite beautiful. I loved her handwriting, but I wasn't sure I loved her. At least not with the absolute certainty that I felt for Scorpius and my mother.

The last time I can remember loving my father, actively loving him with a real bone-deep affection, was seeing him greet the Dark Lord just after he'd been released from Azkaban. My father's skin was so pale as to be luminous. The Carrows had laughed at his prison pallor, but I thought it made him look like an angel. His incarceration had turned my father's hair from white blonde to just white, but he swaggered into the great hall of the Manor with all the arrogance of old, clearly expecting to be greeted with open arms. All the subtle looks of warning my mother was sending in my father's direction were ignored, so happy was he to be free, and, no doubt, relishing the thought of being Voldemort's second-in-command once again. Aunt Bellatrix's sly smile should have tipped him off, but my father was giddy with relief at being home. And then, instead of the convivial hey ho, instead of the handshake, the effusive speech welcoming him back, the Dark Lord asked him to make tea. That humiliation, that debasing of self was, as they say, a defining moment. I loved my father so much in that horrible moment that tears sprang to my eyes

My father's stint in Azkaban had permanently demoted him in Voldemort's eyes, and upon his return he was nothing more than Voldemort's human house elf. Still, those years in Azkaban hadn't robbed my father of his brains. Once Voldemort appropriated the Manor as his base of operations, my father begin nightly forays into the cellar to remove the good liquor and stash as much of it as he could in the family crypt before Voldemort's ragtag army of dissatisfied pure-bloods and hooligans emptied out the cellars. Whatever he had managed to move was enough to feed his drunk until it killed him. Potter had somehow convinced the Wizengamot to subject my father to nothing more than house arrest, as opposed to returning him to Azkaban, and my father had spent the next ten years dead drunk until finally he was merely dead.

"Draco, do you want to add a postscript?" Astoria murmured.

I shook my head. Even as I said, "I'll write my own letter tomorrow," I wondered. Is Potter happy? 

******************************

_To Be Continued_


	2. 2

In some ways, Astoria leaving me was strangely liberating; I’d been expecting her to leave for what seemed like forever, and when she finally handed me a cup of tea and at the same time said, “It’s time I go. I believe we are done,” I could only nod and say, “Yes. I agree.”

Its inevitability didn’t alleviate the crushing loneliness that began to define my “new” life. I’m not the sort of person who does well on his own. I tend to revert to those tendencies that should NOT be reverted to, although not the ones you’d think. No, I become moody, depressed, and all my nervous tics and OCD tendencies that I’ve had some modest success in taming over the years come to the fore. Of course, even with Astoria I was still somewhat arrogant and slightly intolerant of others’ perceived failures, but I have a good sense of humor and have managed to retain the hard-learned lesson that one does not have to utter every thought that comes into one’s head. That sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and listen. A year living with Voldemort had had its pluses. Well, one plus. I grew up that year. Many—if not all—of my preconceived notions about my family, my place in the world, and my very identity as a wizard were shattered, with no other concepts to replace them with.

I had to start from scratch.

More a matter of trying to stay sane than anything else forced me to hunt for who I was outside of who I’d been. I’d married early, desperate for both legitimacy and love. I did not marry Astoria because her family had been on the “right” side of the war, but neither do I think I would have married someone who’d been on the “wrong” side of the war. Anyone who actually envisioned a post-war life that was run by Voldemort was the biggest idiot imaginable. I wanted nothing to do with them. I admit I was slow off the mark—it took me a torture session or two—but eventually the reality that was Voldemort hit me over the head.

I didn’t know what a post-war scenario without Voldemort would be like, but I sure as hell knew what one with him would be like. Could anything be worse? I strongly doubted it. I had stared at Potter’s misshapen lumpy face and thought, he’s the only one, the only person who can defeat him. He’s the only person who can end this, this _carnage_. Despite Aunt Bella’s shrieking, I waffled and refused to name him. I’d loathed Potter with a burning, obsessive hatred for six years, and now I wanted to get down on my knees and beg him for his help, clutch his hands and beg for help like there was no tomorrow. I’d like to think he saw that in my face. Probably not, but it didn’t matter. Whatever help I could give him, I had to give it. I was, for the first time in my limited life, not serving myself. Had I turned him over to Aunt Bella it would have benefitted me and my family to an enormous degree. It would have restored my father to his previous role as Voldemort’s right hand. It would have ended the war. It would have ensured Voldemort’s victory. The Malfoys would have been heroes. Despite all that, I couldn’t turn him over. I gave Potter what little I could give and hoped against hope that he would take that sliver of opportunity and mine it for all it was worth. And he did. Thank fucking god.

As I watched house elves magick into small boxes Astoria’s books, her desk, a favorite chair, a clock that had been a wedding present from her parents, and various odds and sods she’d collected through our marriage, I wondered if I had married her because I was so goddamn grateful. That a decent human being had been so foolish to fall in love with me. I was still grateful. The son of Lucius Malfoy might be shunned and ignored; the husband of Astoria Greengrasse wasn’t as easy to dismiss. I hadn’t brought anything to our marriage but me, and how depressing to realize that her love, uncomplicated and real, hadn’t been enough to sustain me. Was it my fault? Was it my fault, I asked over and over again as I gripped the edge of a chair for some sort of support as she Apparated away.

I couldn’t answer that question. I suppose I could have asked her, but I didn’t really want to hear the answer. Even as I collapsed into a chair and sat there crying off and on for hours, I knew that in some ways I’d shoved her out the door, even if I didn’t realize it. I wanted more, something indefinable that she couldn’t give me. I missed her and mourned her, but I still didn’t love her enough to ask her to stay.

What now?

Three weeks after she'd left, I was sitting in my library staring at the fire and clutching a soddened handkerchief, when an owl pecked at the rain-lashed window. Such an enormous, magnificent white owl could only belong to one person. It was another request to meet. That he needed to talk to me about my mother. My mother?

***************************

_To be continued_


	3. Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh, picking up from where we left off months and months ago.

I sat there with Potter’s note in my hand, speculating what he could possibly mean, when the logs in the fireplace whooshed up into a blaze and Scorpius’ face appeared. With not even a “Hi, Dad,” he announced that he and Charlie Weasley had gotten married. Before I could say anything in response, he said that there would be a reception at The Burrow the following Sunday, and that he expected me and Astoria to be there. Contact Molly and Arthur for details. At that the fire went dark. Regardless of what was on my lips, condemnations or congratulations, I was effectively silenced. Which I suppose was the point.

The irritated caw from Potter’s owl brought me back to the present. Clearly she expected a reply. I scribbled a note on the bottom of Potter’s owl, saying, “Will see you at the Weasley’s for reception. Let’s talk then. DM.” I gave the owl a treat for her pains, but still she pecked her displeasure into the flat of my palm; she didn’t break the skin, but it was sharp enough to let me know she was miffed at me for keeping her waiting. I gave her another treat in penance, and she blinked at me in an expression of haughty forgiveness. With a caw and a magnificent unfurling of her wings, she flew through the open window in the direction of Ottery St. Catchpole.

I spent the next few days trying to parse how I felt about Scorpius and Weasley. I suppose I should force myself to call him ‘Charlie’ since he was now my son-in-law. And I found that I wasn’t in favor and I wasn’t against. I had a grudging respect for Weasley, despite his rather pedestrian underpinnings, and I thought that Scorpius was far too young to be in a committed relationship with a man who was even older than his father, but it was what it was. Once you’ve been a Death Eater, then your credibility… Well, let’s just say I’d made some colossal mistakes in my past. If I’d married a dragon tamer at least two decades my senior, it would have been seen as a step in the right direction. You willingly become the lackey of a wizarding megalomaniac, and you have permanently put yourself in the glass house to end all glass houses.

Whatever niggling remonstrations I had, I ignored. Instead, I sent Molly and Arthur an effusive owl, saying how happy I was at the prospect of our two families being now joined—I doubt they felt the same—and could I host the event? This was purely selfish because I didn’t have a hope in hell that the Weasleys would be pouring anything other than the finest unicorn piss, and label me a self-serving snob, but I wanted to toast my only son’s happiness with some decent champagne. My offer was declined, of course. Bugger.

Three days after Scopius’ phone call, Astoria and I had dinner together for the first time since she’d walked out on me. I let her choose the restaurant, and she chose a fashionable place that I loathe, where every single dish on the menu has one too many ingredients. It is the difference between cutting edge and preposterous. Her choice was a small shot across my bow.

We sniped at each other for a good twenty minutes while waiting for the starter, little digs that to anyone else’s ears would have sounded a bit snarky but nothing serious. But we’d crossed a line in our relationship when she left me from which there was no return. A severing of selves. To us these comments were razor sharp and meant to hurt.

And when she announced that she was seeing someone and that didn’t elicit even a soupcon of a frown from me, she began to cry.

“Look,” I said, determined to _not_ ignore the tears. I handed her my napkin to daub her cheeks. “I suppose you’d prefer I was jealous, but really, darling, we’re done. We both know that. What I do want is for you to be happy. You haven’t been happy with me for ages and you deserve it. So who is this fellow?”

She gave me a speculative glance and then her mouth eased. “You don’t know him. He’s French. With the diplomatic corps. I met him at a bridge tournament. Much older and seems quite smitten. Daphne likes him.”

That was the ultimate vote of approval as I knew. Daphne had never really accepted me. She put up with me for Astoria’s sake, but I never took her general bonhomie as anything but a sisterly duty to be nice to your brother-in-law. She was a brick, dear Daphne, and I liked her enormously. It was never reciprocated. She loves Astoria and adores Scorpius. She tolerated me because she loves them. Now that I wasn’t in the picture as far as her sister was concerned, she cheerfully cut me out of her life.

“You?” she said in a voice devoid of any emotion, which told me that _had_ I been seeing someone, it would have hurt her deeply. It didn’t seem quite fair that she could replace me within six months of walking out on me, and had I done the same, she probably would have thrown her wine in my face and stalked out of the restaurant. But then she’d become disillusioned; I’d merely become bored.

“God, no.” I was surprised by the vehemence of my voice. “I can barely brush my teeth these days,” I admitted. She did her best to hide a smug little smile. I let her have her what she supposed was a victory. The days when I could be cruel for the sake of proving a point were long gone. It didn’t matter. I knew that my indifference over the last few years must have been terribly hurtful. I hadn’t realized how much until she’d walked out the door.

Mother’s death had been much harder on me than I’d ever imagined. And if Astoria thought that this was due to her, then fine. The divorce papers had been signed and sealed. There was no going back. Not that I think she wanted back; I’d hurt her too deeply. I certainly didn’t want her back. I was crushingly lonely, but she’d become Scorpius’ mother and not my wife. But still. We had had our youth, a child, and twenty-five Christmases together. No one could replace that in our lives. All that history belonged to me and her and no one else. I can imagine how hard it had been for her to leave me. I hadn’t been nearly that brave, obviously.

“You plan on going to the Weasley’s, yes?” I said, as much to get the conversation away from the two of us and our sterile marriage as to the point of this whole dinner.

“Of course,” she said with some asperity. “How do you feel about this?”

“He’s too old for him, but other than that, he could do a lot worse. What I don’t like is that his life is now abroad. I doubt we’ll see him more than twice a year.”

“How mature of you,” she said sotto voce.

I’d reached my limit. “Stop it, Astoria. I don’t relish having my only child halfway around the world, in fucking Romania for Merlin’s sake. I never expected Sunday dinners with the roast beef, Yorkshire pud, and two veg, but it would have been nice not to have him thousands of miles away.” I put emphasis on the word, ‘thousands.’ “And I’m not sure how children might fit into this, but I would have liked a grandchild. Although I have to admit, having the Malfoy line die out with me is probably fitting. The Malfoy sins deserve some sort of cosmic retribution. Yes, I will be there, and, yes, he’s too young, and, yes, Weasley’s too old, and, yes, Romania is far too far away to suit either of us. Agree?”

She nodded, a slight acknowledgment that she had pushed too hard.

What I left unsaid was that Scorpius’ relationship with Charlie Weasley was as resounding a repudiation of his Malfoy-ness as possible. And me. The death of my mother, whom he’d loved very deeply, was another length of shackle cut from his family’s awful past. Now it was my turn to fight back tears. There was little hope of him scouring off the sins of the father and grandfather by remaining in England. But halfway around the world and partnered with a pure-blood of unassailable credentials?

Thankfully our entrees arrived and we could concentrate on our food. Which was edible because I’d demanded that they leave out the escarole. Coffee and brandy was mostly speculation about how formal this reception at the Weasley’s would be. We both concluded that it was not at all, and that dress robes would be over the top. It seemed that Astoria and I agreed on very little these days, but on sartorial dos and don’ts we were still in accord.

As I was helping her on with her coat, I asked, “Are you bringing the Frenchman?”

She wrenched her arm away and looked down for a second. When she brought her head up, her eyes were swimming in tears. “Oh, Draco,” she whispered and Apparated away, one arm in a coat sleeve, the rest of the coat dangling down her back.

I went to the bar and had another brandy. A double.

_To be continued_


	4. Chapter 4

My arrival clearly put a damper on the festivities. Through an open window I could hear lots of laughter and the occasional shriek. I debated just Apparating away, but no, I had to do this for Scorpius’ sake. To show him that I approved of his marriage. I knocked. Everything went silent and then the door opened. I walked in and made a beeline for Scorpius, who had an arm draped over Charlie Weasley. I hugged him and told him how happy I was for them and how had his grandmother been alive, she’d be ecstatic. He hesitated but gave me a hug back; a small acknowledgment of affection but at least it was something. I shook hands with Weasley and told him how delighted I was he was marrying my son. Then it was off to greet Molly and Arthur and offer my congratulations. Astoria and I sideswiped kisses, the rancor generated during our dinner still hovering between us. Finally, I bade a hearty hello to the room at large and then retreated to a corner of the lounge, nursing a cup of tea and nibbling on a celery stick.

Except for that tall Weasley’s French wife, no one actively cut me out of respect for Scorpius. She’d made a point of coming over to my corner and leaned over to faux kiss one cheek and then the other, while uttering truly inspired obscenities in each of my ears before stepping back. I didn’t expect anything less. Gradually the room slipped back into the loud, happy celebration it’d been before I arrived. I hugged my corner and sipped endless cups of tea. I have my standards, and I took one whiff of the champagne they were pouring and decided to abstain from drinking. Plus, this was a volatile situation at best. I needed to keep my wits and my wand about me at all times.

The houses at Hogwarts were so Balkanized that even Astoria, who’d been on the good side of the war, was somewhat at a social loss. Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin to this crowd. But she weathered on, flitting about the room, asking for recipes from Molly, discussing bridge strategies with Arthur, and oohing and ahhing over the various Weasley grandchildren. There were hoards of them. Although I have a general distain for unruly children, I looked on them with an unusual indulgence. They underscored how this would never be mine. That should Scorpius and Weasley have children, which I thought was very unlikely, that their children would be strangers to me, never frolicking in and out of the table legs in my dining room.

I couldn’t see myself in Romania, and I strongly doubted that they would want me in Romania. Scorpius not only chose Charlie Weasley; he chose exile.

Once the obligatory toasts had been made and the cake cut, I felt I could take a breather in the garden without appearing rude. The garden of the Burrow was much like the inside itself, rather higgledy-piggledy but functional. Plots of veg were laid out in a haphazard manner, with a flower bed or two interspersed for no reason I could fathom other than there was land, and, heigh-ho, shall we add some rose bushes? This horticultural mess made me think of my mother and her carefully laid out garden, which was also functional but also beautiful. I suppose there was a wild beauty in this mishmash of plants, but there wasn’t any harmony.

Spying an enormous oak some distance away from the house, I made my way toward it. Perfect. I could sit on the leeside of the trunk and no one could see me. Thirty minutes in some fresh air without toddlers crawling over my feet would restore me. Then I could hug Scorpius, shake Weasley’s hand again, thank Molly and Arthur, and then, thank Merlin, leave. I wouldn’t go back to the Manor. Too many memories to deal with today. It was events like these when I missed my mother the most. Maybe I would Apparate to Diagon Alley. See what new books had come in to Flourish & Blotts. Stay the night at the Leaky and have a decent drink. Maybe three. Maybe I was becoming an alcoholic.

I plopped down as the base of the tree with a heavy sigh. Cripes, I was exhausted. I knew this, but every time it was hammered home, it was never any less painful. The war would never end for me. I’d been a Death Eater, and nothing, _nothing_ I did in the past, present, or future could atone for that. And I didn’t really expect anything less, but still. For several years I’d hoped that the colossal stupidity of a seventeen-year-old boy wouldn’t haunt me for the rest of my life. What an utterly ridiculous idea. The only solace I could derive from my current status in wizarding society was that Scorpius seemed to be immune to the disgust and scorn that usually greeted me when I entered a room. His bizarre friendship with Albus Potter had greased the wheels at Hogwarts, and now he that was married to Charlie Weasley, no doors would be shut to him. For that I was so grateful.

Maybe I should move? Emigrate like Scorpius.

After the war, Astoria and I had spent several years traveling. It was partly to avoid my father, who saw fit to drink himself to death, and partly to avoid wizarding England. We’d honeymooned in China, with the first year of our marriage spent hiking Asia. I needed something big, something overwhelming to scour away the horrors of the last few years. Not even the splendor of the Himalayas could completely banish all those memories, but they made me feel terribly small, which is what I needed. Something was bigger than me, grander and more majestic than anything I’d experienced in my small little life up to that point. Once we’d trekked hundreds of miles, tromping over the peaks in India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, we fell into an easy routine. Summers were spent in France, winters in Venice, spring in Bali, and fall was usually in Portugal. We’d return home for Christmas and New Year’s, but no sooner did the calendar say January 2nd than we were off again. Eventually, Astoria began to hanker for a home. Plus, the birth of Scorpius and the death of my father—events that were so simultaneous that they seemed planned—put an end to this insane nomadic lifestyle. I came home.

My hand clutched the spent leaves at the base of the tree, and I brought a handful of them up to my face. I smelled earth and sweet grass and the faint hint of mint. And although I’d been in many places that I’d loved, that were seductive and so beautiful that they brought tears to my eyes, nowhere I’d been smelled like England. No, this was home. I threw the leaves back onto the ground and uttered a loud “Fuck.”

“Malfoy? Are you alright?”

I looked up.

Harry Potter was sitting in the “y” of a large tree branch, eating his cake.

_To be continued._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still moving forward

Well, this was awkward.

I coughed a couple of times and waved a hand toward the Burrow. "Headache. The noise," I lied.

Potter held up his plate. It was as clean as if he'd licked off any remaining crumbs. Perhaps he had. "Did you get some cake? Molly's an awfully good baker."

"I'll grab some soon. Just..." I waved my hand again. "All that shrieking. There's a little one-year old who only seems to be able to communicate in banshee-like screeching." I was going to say the one with red hair, but then they _all_ had red hair. "One of yours?"

He nodded and his mouth flatlined into a grimace. "One of James' twins. A total hellion."

Something was off. He shouldn't have been out here, sitting in a tree eating his cake by his lonesome. No, he belonged back inside, laughing and back-slapping and pounding back the Firewhiskies along with the rest of them. Basic Gryffindor gaity. Although Slytherins were never considered slouches in the boozing-it-up department, we usually made sly comments about each other and traded obscene gossip while pounding back our Firewhiskies. Come to think of it, there wasn't a whole lot of laughing in the Slytherin dungeon. Mostly a lot of smirking.

God, I had to stop measuring my life with a Hogwarts-era yardstick. I was more than two decades away from that shallow, arrogant boy, and I needed to bury him once and for all. If I couldn't expect the general wizarding public to do it, I at least had to do it for myself.

"What are _you_ doing out here?" I asked. "Not that I don't very much appreciate everyone's restraint, but not a few people in that room would derive enormous satisfaction from hexing me to Wales and back. Headache aside, I'm probably saving myself from a number of truly horrific spells, massive boils all over my face at a minimum. Obviously, you don't have that problem. So?"

"Headache," he lied back. I'm an excellent liar; it takes one to know one. "You happy about, you know, Charlie and Scorpius?" Potter's voice was guarded. "You seemed, um, happy."

Forty-three years old and Potter still couldn't utter a sentence without a bazillion commas in it.

"Of course I am. He seems deliriously happy. Scorpius, I mean." Merlin's dick, two seconds in Potter's presence and I was beginning to talk in a supernumerary of commas. "This isn't a reflection on Weasley, you understand, but I do have to admit that it makes me sad that I will never have a grandchild. Or least I assume I won't. You will be swimming in them, you lucky man. And now that Astoria..."

I let that sentence die off and dipped my head to hide my face. I didn't want Potter to see my yearning, my disappointment. Astoria and I weren't too old to have another, but we were too exhausted with each other. I've often wondered if there was a curse on the Malfoys, one that only allowed us to have one child. Well, if there was, we probably deserved it. I would have loved to have more children. I imagine that most people would be shocked at that, but when you've been standing in the shadow of hell's gates for what seems like forever, that innocence and unfettered joy of children is a balm on those wounds that never heal. We put one foot in front of the other and get on with life, but the sores are always at the ready to erupt. It's wonder why Potter didn't have ten children. His war wounds are the deepest of us all. 

"I'm sorry about you and Astoria." he said.

"Me, too," I admitted. "But there's nothing for it. You'd think that with my mother dying that it would bring us closer. It just ripped off the band-aids that had been holding us together."

"Maybe--"

"No, there's no going back, I'm afraid. I'm sure you don't know this because why would you care what happened to my family, but after the war and my trial, and even though you stood up for me, it didn't make a whole lot of difference to most people." I stopped. "Circe's tits, Potter, did I ever thank you for your testimony? Those years are just a blank now, but I hope--"

"Yeah, you slobbered all over my shoulder at the _Leaky_ after the trial. We're good." Potter was smiling slightly so I suppose my apology was heartfelt enough for him.

"I'm sober now and I do thank you from the bottom of my heart." I couldn't have possibly said it more earnestly and I made sure that we made eye contact, just like that fateful day when my aunt was yelling at me to identify him. I reached up to shake his hand, and for one horrible second I thought he wasn't going to take it. But he did, because that's the sort of man he is.

"S'okay," he mumbled and blushed as he usually did when faced with his acts of bravery.

I'd done a 180 on him during my trial. There was no reason for him to stand up for me and yet he did. He insisted, swore, and demanded that they exonerate me because I'd refused to expose him to Aunt Bellatrix, saving me at the very least from several years in Azkaban and at the worst, a kiss from a Dementor.

Refusing to name him was my family's one chance at salvation. Despite the certainty that uttering Potter's name would exalt us back into Voldemort's good graces, I would have sooner exposed Potter than cut off my right arm. No one in their right mind would want a wizarding world with Voldemort at its helm. My sixth year at Hogwarts was my baptism, my seventh year my purgatory. Potter and I had been staring at each other for years. I knew it was him, he knew I knew. And I hoped in those three seconds that our eyes locked that I conveyed what I was thinking: Potter, I can give you one chance. Take it, you brave motherfucker, because that's the only chance you're going to get in this house.

"Maybe you two just need some time apart. Or maybe a vacation together, just to get back, I don't know, to where--"

I shook my head. "To nowhere. I think that I still love her, but not in the way I should. And she knows that. I used to think she felt the same way, but I'm not sure anymore. Regardless, at some point she became Scorpius' mother and not my wife. I owe her, I know. She stood by me when no one else would. The forests felled to create the hundreds and hundreds of Howlers we received after the war probably decimated the tree population of two continents. But still, she married me and loved me, and I'm as grateful to her as I am to you. We went on a bit of a walk about after we got married. Hiked through Asia. Glorious. I remember standing with her watching the sunrise over Annapurna, my arms wrapped around her waist, holding her tight and thinking, 'I will never let her go.' And twenty-odd years later she Apparated out of the Manor and I didn't even raise a hand to stop her. How fucked is that?"

Potter stared at me with the most profound expression of sadness and pity on his face, so much so that I would have sworn that he was on the verge of crying. I put a hand over my mouth to stop talking. What was happening to me? Here I was voicing the demise of my marriage to Potter, who probably had never so much as had a single fight in his long marriage to that Ginny Weasley. I was so desperate to talk to someone, _anyone_ , that I bared my marital history to a man who by all rights should be the last person who'd give a flying fuck about my marriage.

We were silent for a couple of minutes, me trying to muster up some dignity, Potter, no doubt, wondering if I was going to hang myself with my belt.

I cleared my throat and turned toward him. "Potter, you were going to tell me something about my mother. Now would be a good time as we're alone. What was it--"

"Harry?" a very unfriendly voice demanded.

I turned. Ginny Potter-Weasley stood there glaring first at Potter and then at me and then back at Potter. Her hands were on her hips and but for my presence, I knew she would have begun ripping strips off of her husband.

"All the noise, Gin. Have a little headache. I thought I'd have my cake out here."

Ginny ignored me. She'd always been a pretty girl, imbued with that snotty confidence endemic to all the Weasley children with the exception of the Weasel. She'd become something of a slimmer carbon copy of her mother, but I suspect without all that domestic expertise. No one was pining to eat any of Ginny Potter's puddings, I'd wager. For obvious reasons and not that I could blame her, she'd tried to put up road blocks to Scorpius and Albus' friendship, but since they were away at school for ninety percent of the year, she didn't have much luck with that. With Scorpius sorted into Ravenclaw--I had a feeling that somehow Dumbledore, even in death, had manipulated that one so that the sins of the grandfather and father wouldn't be visited on the grandson and son--it blunted some of the hell that Scorpius inevitably suffered at Hogwarts. At least he got his letter.

"We've been waiting for you. To make a toast."

"Another toast? I thought we were done with toasts." Clearly Potter was trying to keep his voice even, which had a strained quality like his throat hurt. I couldn't say the same about his wife. Any more pissed off with her husband and a battery of batbogeys hexes would have been spontaneously begun erupting from her wand.

"No," she snapped. 

Potter jumped down from his tree limb and without another word began walking back toward the house.

Ginny followed but not before hissing at me, "Death eater bastard."

Potter hadn't been staring at me with pity; he'd been commiserating with me.

_To be continued_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are still moving forward.

I thanked Molly and Arthur for their hospitality, hugged Scorpius, and then leaned over toward Weasley and whispered in his ear that if he ever hurt my son I’d tear him apart with my bare hands. As I went to say goodbye to Astoria, she turned her cheek so much that I ended up kissing her hair. I smelled the heavy aroma of her perfume, lush and a little overpowering. I inhaled her scent one last time. I didn’t have the right to even kiss her cheek anymore.

It was the season for last times, apparently.

Then I Apparated away, even while mentally wondering that given the magical expertise in that room, there was absolutely no excuse for the pitiful state of their wards.

I didn’t go home but landed in Diagon Alley and made straight for the Leaky. Tom accepted my Galleons unwillingly, but he accepted them. We had a tacit arrangement that I drink in the darkest corner of the pub and keep my head down. There was a dingy corner at the very back that I frequented. The table was always a little sticky, and I wouldn’t vouchsafe for the cleanliness of the floor. Since it was, on the whole, a rather unappealing spot, I could usually count on it being empty.

As a boy, I used to love to come to the Leaky with my father. He often bought rounds for everyone. Not that he did this out of any magnanimity. These days, with a decidedly jaded and more realistic point-of-view, I assumed his generosity was more of a statement that he _could_ afford to buy drinks for everyone. It was, as were most of his gestures, a display of power and wealth. Oh, to be that boy again. To be under the mistaken belief that my father was lauded and esteemed. When, in reality, he was hated and feared.

I cradled my drink in my hands, trying to focus only on the hard glass against my palms and failing. Would this be my future? Astoria’s anger toward me only escalating as the years went by? Receiving invitations from the Weasleys to parties and family gatherings because they couldn’t really _not_ invite me as I was Scorpius’ father, but everyone gritting their teeth until I left the room? 

I must admit that it was somewhat gratifying that the entire family had embraced Scorpius so whole-heartedly, being a testament to what a good job we’d done raising him. He didn’t seem to have an ounce of Black in him—thank god—very little Malfoy (with the exception of his phenomenal ability on a broom and my eyes and pointy chin), and a pinch of Greengrass (being something of a bookworm). His innate decency and gentleness was all his own.

There was a small part of me that was aching to shout, “I raised him, too. It wasn’t all Astoria’s doing!” But what would be the point? The one thing I could say, and say it without any self-delusion, was that I’d been a good father. I’d basically ask myself, what would my father do, and do the opposite. It seemed to be an excellent blueprint for parenting.

Scorpius wouldn’t be a victim of his family’s history, as I had been. But then he had very different parents. I suppose at some point I will have to face the reality of my mother. Not today. Frankly, that might take decades. There was one thing I was sure of: she loved me. I couldn’t say that of my father. I’d come to believe that I was merely an extension of his megalomania. I’m not even sure he loved my mother. She was… How do I put this? She was an appropriate wife. Being a Black, her pure-blood credentials were unassailable. She had superb taste, she was beautiful, her status in wizarding society was exemplary, and she had the management skills of Napoleon; running a large estate was child’s play. It was as if he’d checked off a bunch of boxes and she was “hired.” Their marriage wasn’t a subject my mother and I could ever discuss, obviously. Add it to the pile of subjects we never discussed and now never will.

My love for my father had been destroyed by the war; I could not have the same thing happen with my mother: I’d go mad. Was there some point in their marriage when she realized the type of man she’d married? Did she share his lust for power? His insane veneration for all things pure-blood? His pathological arrogance? The sort of pure-blood nonsense I’d listened to at Black family gatherings was evidence enough that she shared his prejudices. Was she like me? Someone who’d willingly aped my father’s worldview until I saw, first-hand, the type of unspeakable horror that grew out of that intolerance. After one year at Chez Voldemort, formerly known as Malfoy Manor, my arrogance and intolerance was beaten out of me. Each torture session, each grotesque act of astonishing cruelty, was a lesson in what a victorious Voldemort world would be like. Cruciatus curses for all! If the years before Voldemort’s return were off limits, discussing the years after his return were even more forbidden.

Although my marriage to Astoria had opened some doors, many doors were shut forever. Those against Voldemort didn’t trust me, and those who _had_ supported him didn’t trust me because I’d married a Greengrass, one of the few ancient pure-blood families to reject Voldemort’s cant. I was neither fish nor fowl, as they say.

Returning again and again to the places of my past where the memories were pleasant but also false would not get me anywhere other than a locked room at St. Mungo’s, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Sadly, my present was now as empty as my past. I sipped my whiskey slowly, relishing the slow burn of the alcohol trickle down my throat and warm my bones. Although alcohol usually brought on hellish insomnia, maybe tonight would be different. Maybe if I got drunk enough, I would more or less pass out in my bed.

As I debated whether or not to have another drink, a hand thumped me on the shoulder so violently that I dropped my glass. As I turned around, wand drawn, I saw a woman standing behind me. She was around my age, maybe younger, but her face was distorted with the grief and rage. Before I could say anything in response to her physical assault, she spit her drink in my face and began to yell invectives at me in the coarsest language imaginable, calling me a fucking Death Eater and various other epithets in between the most heart-wrenching sobs. It wasn’t any different from any of the other scenes I’d endured over the years. I remained seated, impassive in the face of her misery, letting her rage on and on, as I focused on the spit and lager soaking my shirt and now running down my back. When she was spent of words and swaying a little, the depth of her anger having brought her to the verge of physical collapse, I stood up.

As I pulled a handkerchief out of my trousers’ pocket, she began to cower in front of me, assuming I was going to hex her, maybe even kill her. And when I didn’t, she stared at my outstretched hand, like my handkerchief was some sort of evil talisman.

“Here, sit, please,” I insisted. I moved my chair closer to her.

She didn’t sit so much as collapse onto the chair. I dropped the handkerchief in her lap. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, given that I was drenched in her spit and beer. The true tragedy of these scenes is that she could have lost a father, a mother, a brother or a sister who’d been a Death Eater. Loss is loss. I had betrayed all.

As I began to walk out of the room, I caught Tom’s eye. I wouldn’t be welcome again; I knew that. I gave him a brief nod to let him know I understood. The heels of my shoes ground out the most unholy sound on the ancient floorboards as I made for the door. It was the only sound in the room except for the far-off sound of whimpering; the woman who’d assaulted me was crying once again. I had my hand on the door knob when I heard someone say, “Malfoy.” It was Harry Potter. Who was yet again a witness to my humiliation.

Some things never change.

I kept on walking.

*******************************

_To be continued_


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco is trying to face his demons.

As soon as I exited the Leaky, I walked straight into Muggle London. I searched for another pub, any pub, any place that had liquor. Given the amount of booze that the general population of London consumes on a daily basis, I found an open pub in no more than thiry-seven seconds. Located down a dark alley, half the signage was unlit, and the alley was very dark, but what the hell. All I cared about was the quality of the liquor.

As if to confirm that I was far too emotionally distraught to Apparate anywhere, I tried a nifty little charm that transferred Galleons to pounds and failed. First go around I got lire; the second go around rupees. It wasn’t until I took three depth breaths and centered my brain on “Money, Muggle, Pounds,” that I was able to cast a successful charm, transfiguring Galleons into crisp new pound notes. Clearly, if I’d tried to Apparate home, my balls would have ended up in Cardiff and my dick in Moscow.

There was a part of me that admitted my role in the rise of Voldemort, and there was a part of me that wanted to scream, “For fuck sake, I was little more than a child.” It was a war of conscience that would never end. To acknowledge my culpability in all that had happened was to thoroughly repudiate everything my family had stood for. To deny their culpability was to be, in essence, a collaborator, a supporter, an acolyte of Voldemort.

A Death Eater.

The mark was proof positive of my stupidity. My refusal to name Potter the repudiation and acknowledgment of that stupidity.

Yes, I had supported the idea of Voldemort; the reality of Voldemort was another matter. It was a conflict that I could never resolve. The stupidity and innocence of youth superseded by the reality of, well, reality. In some ways being innocent had had its pluses. Cant is very easy to parrot and champion. Reality? Well, a much different kettle of fish. Watch someone being tortured to death opens one’s eyes.

I didn’t get trashed that often. Mostly because I realized that I could, with very little prodding, go the way of my father, who finished his days tethered to a bottle of cognac. And while I might be drowning my sorrows because of my stupidity, my father had done it because he’d back the wrong wizarding horse. There were miles of difference between the two, but alcoholism is alcoholism. Still, I had to bleach that night’s episode from my mind with whatever means possible.

I saw the sign and thought, “Oh, thank Merlin.”

I’d lost friends in the war, and I knew the depth of that woman’s grief. I _shared_ it. Just because I’d come to realize that Voldemort was a fucking psychopath didn’t mean that I didn’t mourn those who’d died. I thought of Vince and Greg every day. Even now. They were simple and rather stupid fellows, but they were _my_ stupid fellows. I’d grown up with them, and I still missed them. Every day I missed them, and I didn’t think I would _stop_ missing them.

I have ceased to catalogue the war as those who had won or those who had lost. We _all_ lost. All of us had had our innocence stripped away, painful centimeter by painful centimeter. No one, _no one_ had better say to my face that the Goyles or Crabbes mourned the loss of their sons any less than the Weasleys had mourned the loss of their son. I would hex them without a moment’s thought.

And so my mission to get absolutely pissed out of my gourd was partly to forget and partly to remember.

The half-lit sign should have been a tip-off. Anyone with three brain cells would have realized that “The Bullw*i*” was self-explanatory. However, I was so whacked out emotionally that it wasn’t until my fourth whiskey that I realized that I’d wandered into a gay bar. Not that I cared about that sort of thing. My sexuality was somewhat squiffy. Blaise, Pansy, and I had enjoyed various sexual hijinks while students at Hogwarts. One of the first charms Snape taught us was a contraception charm. He knew the randy sods populating the Slytherin dormitory. We weren’t so much of a threesome as a whateversome. And although if asked today I’d probably rate myself as hetero, I wasn’t adverse to a little dick now and then. Not that I’d indulged since Blaise. I might have been a piss-poor husband, but I’d been faithful to Astoria for decades. One couldn’t lay infidelity at my door.

My emotional despair must have been so evident that I was largely left alone at my little table to inhale as much alcohol as my pounds would purchase; at some point I blacked out. Thank Circe for small miracles.

I woke up at Malfoy Manor. Vials of hangover potion had been lined up like proper little soldiers on my bedside table.

The first two vials I spilled all over my sheets because my hands were shaking so badly. Forcing myself to sit up, I downed bottles three and four and waited a minute or two for the magic to take hold. God, I loved magic. Within five minutes I could flop back on my pillow with the knowledge that death by hangover had been averted once again.

Once the thumping of my brain cells had stopped, I realized, hello, I’d been in a Muggle pub. How could I possibly have Apparated back to the Manor in one piece, conjoured up several vials of excellent hangover potion, and then get myself under the covers (albeit still wearing the clothes from the day before). What in the holy fuck had happened?

Racking my brains, I tried to remember what had happened after whiskey no. 5. There’d been that ginger-haired johnny. A few cruel words about how gingers had never tasted my dick and never would had put a stop to his weak attempt to chat me up. I knew it was cruel at the time, but needs must. And then? It was all so fuzzy. There was a blond fellow with green eyes. He’d asked if I wanted company, I told him no, he sat down anyway, and then… Cripes, it was all a blank. Had he actually been a wizard? Hard to fathom. Also hard to fathom how I’d gotten home in one piece.

In a panic, I reached for my dick, then my balls. I wriggled my toes and then all my fingers. Yes, all there. This was unacceptable. I was now taking inventory of body parts. Right then and then I decided to stop drinking. Entirely. I’d never had an alcoholic blackout before, and if that isn’t a bell-weather for a serious drinking problem, I don’t know what is. I was done.

“Sneeples,” I shouted. He appeared wearing a pair of socks with lurid day-glo green shamrocks all over them and an equally stroke-inducing green top coat. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he’d worn that outfit just to yank my drunken chain. As a silent aside, I wondered who in the hell designs clothes for house-elves? What a sick fuck. “Destroy all the liquor in the house. Right now!”

Thank Merlin for house-elves and their propensity to obey. Anyone in their right mind would have challenged me. He just nodded and then, I assume, proceeded to pour down the drain thousands of Galleons worth of booze.

With an abundance of caution, I put my feet on the floor and stood up. Although my headache was more or less tamed, my stomach was not too happy; I doubted it could handle another bout of hangover potion.

I steadied myself by a bedpost. Here I was staring at the same linens that I’d had as a boy: silver sheets and green bedclothes. How pathetic was this? I was forty-three years old, and my bedroom was still a paean to Slytherin. I grabbed my wand—which was on my nightstand, another WTF moment—and changed all the sheets, bedclothes, and comforter to a stark white.

This house, this awful, horrible house. Why was I still living here? My parents were dead, even more importantly, my mother was dead. My wife was gone. My son had decided to live in another country, and given his love of dragons, his life was now in Romania. The pleasant memories of my childhood had been effectively erased by the colossal number of memories I had of people being tortured to death. People I knew. Not anonymous Muggles. But teachers. Students. The parents of students.

It was time to take charge.

I didn’t have to live here anymore, and I would not. I could have been living in a hut for all that Scorpius cared. In fact, he might prefer a hut.

But where?

I debated moving to London, turning Muggle, just telling the entire wizarding world to fuck off. I’d written checks; I’d donated to worthy causes; I’d rebuilt half of Hogwarts, all of it with Malfoy Galleons. I’d done penance for my stupidity again and again. And it didn’t matter.

“Fuck them!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

I threw off the bedclothes and marched to my father’s portrait, now relegated to a distant hallway at the back of the Manor.

“Fuck you,” I screamed. He sneered at me and went back to buffing his nails.

I went to my mother’s portrait, which was hanging in a place of honor over the mantel in the library. I wrapped my arms around the ornate frame. I imagined her hand brushing back the hair from my sweaty forehead. Her beautiful face was dominated by a deep-seated frown and an eyebrow raised in concern; she had no advice for me.

I left the library and walked through room after room, this wing and that wing. Tromped through the garden and even through the dungeon, forcing myself to acknowledge the darkness of my family’s legacy. Who in the fuck has a dungeon? Normal people have wine cellars. But the Malfoys had a dungeon.

This house...

What to do? I sat on the top step of the grand staircase, staring back at portraits of various Malfoy and Black ancestors, who were peering of down on me in disdain. I curled my hand around the newel post. I wished I’d known Sirius. Only he would understand how I was currently feeling. This had been my world. A world I understood and had once been a member of. Now I didn’t belong. Sadly, I didn’t belong anywhere.

Where would I go?

And then it stuck me.

Grove House.

******************************

_To Be Continued_


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco continues to wrestle with his demons.

I don’t know where Grove House got its name. Had there been a family named Grove? Had it once been surrounded by a grove of trees? That part of its history was unknown to me. What I do know is that the Malfoys had read correctly the pulse of revolutionary France and had hightailed their wizarding asses to less violent climes. Both revolutions—Cromwell’s ascent and Robespierre’s sans culottes—had disintegrated the then-squishy relations with Muggles, resulting in a permanent Balkanization of the wizarding society in both countries. As with most revolutions, if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Wizards became part of the problem. When a small child my Black grandmother had terrified me with stories of English Muggles cutting out of the hearts of wizarding children and eating them for breakfast, while my father had gone into great relish describing the beheading of wizarding children and the sounds their heads made as they plopped onto the straw.

And people wonder why I hate Muggles.

The Malfoys had arrived from France with their fortune intact, changed their surname from the decidedly French de Malfoi (how apt was THAT) to the more English-sounding Malfoy, and then scoured Wiltshire for land on which to re-establish themselves as wizarding aristocrats. The previous English family, who’d been ensconced on the land for generations, had sold them the land and bob’s your uncle, Malfoy Manor was erected on what I consider the most beautiful spot in England. Most days I assumed that the Malfoys either sent over house-elves to scare them away, or, perhaps, had taken advantage of the aristocracy’s mad passion for gambling and through Imperious curses had bankrupted the family, and then scooped up the property in payment for gambling debts. On the days when the reality of my family was too hard ignore, I accepted that they probably AK’d them all and then bought the property from heirs, who were more than happy to sell, given that it appeared that the entire family had died of fright. Which sounds horrible but not as horrible as what actually happened to them.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by my father’s magical expertise. He’d been dead twenty years, and yet the Disallusionment charm he’d cast to hide the property was still as powerful and potent as the day he’d cast it. I hadn’t been in that part of the property in decades, and although I thought I knew where the house was located, it took me two weeks to find the exact spot and another week to cast spell after spell to disintegrate his original casting.

The magic had preserved it somewhat, and some savvy Grove ancestor had insisted on a slate roof, which also helped. Based on the architecture, I guessed that it’d been built by a newly minted aristocrat in Elizabeth’s reign; it had that strange amalgamation of a large farm house turned Tudor manse sensibility about it. Eventually it became the privileged child’s ultimate fort. The mullioned windows were hooligan heaven to Vince, Pansy, Greg, and I. Armed with slingshots and rocks, we were determined to smash _all_ of the mullioned windows. We hadn’t succeeded largely because soon after we’d taken “possession,” I’d fallen and broken my arm when a wooden bannister in the great hall had given way. At that my mother insisted that the house be off limits and ordered my father to render it virtually invisible.

I walked through it slowly, not sure about the sturdiness of the floorboards, and half-expecting a wall to cave in on me at any point. My breath was white as the cold wind raced through the empty panes. We done a fair job of breaking many of the windows, the majority of it my doing; even then my seeker’s skills were coming into their own. Broken glass littered the floors. Although my father’s magic had preserved the building from further deterioration over the last thirty-five years, the house’s previous denizens had been trapped in the spell. The skeletons of bats, foxes, and sparrows were everywhere.

Could I live here? The great hall was magnificent, large enough to stable horses, which was, I suspect, its first incarnation. The bannister where I’d broken through was still there, splintered open from the weight of my body. There were lots of little rooms and a plethora of fireplaces. Yes, it had a bit of a rabbit warren feel to it, and my younger self would have scoffed at this hodge-podge of rooms. But now it appealed to me, a respite from the studied elegance of the Manor. And I had no memories of this place, other than the one of the pain of breaking my arm as I hit the stone floor. What a comment on my life. That I actually could feel relief at such a memory, as opposed to my other memories.

It would cost a fortune to rehabilitate, but then I had several fortunes. I would shut up the Manor and live here. It would be months before the place was habitable, but perhaps I could carve out a couple of rooms to live in while the rest of the renovations were being implemented. I stepped outside to survey what had been the garden and farmyard. The faint ghost of a sweep still remained, but the rest was wilderness, a cross-hatch of brambles, saplings struggling to grow among the brambles, clumps of mint, ancient potato vines, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a few scraggly roses that had managed to survive the centuries. It would all have to go.

“Sneeples,” I called, who appeared at once. Monday was magenta day. The top hat was a nice touch, as was the silk cravat. “I’ve decided to close the Manor. Put it in mothballs, more or less, and move here.” Sneeples had been in our family for decades. God knows how old he was, but I suppose by this point _nothing_ surprised him. He nodded. “I can’t move in just yet; the house is knee-deep in animal carcasses, but I plan on hiring a crew this week to start renovating the house. Once they clear out a couple of rooms, I'll move in.” He nodded again.

He gave the surrounding land a sneer. How had I not known after all these years that Sneeples was something of a house snob. I hid a smile, because I could envision such a sneer on my mother’s face as well. Sneeples had been her major domo and had adopted many of her expressions over the years. This wild expanse of brambles and weeds would have driven her spare. “The garden, master. Shall I—”

“No,” I said and leaned down to grab a hunk of grass that was as tall as my knees. I brought it up to my nose. Yes, it smelled perfect. “That’s my job.”

******************************

The hiring of a construction crew took longer than I anticipated, and it was several weeks before I could vacate the Manor. Now that I had decided to leave, it was torture walking its halls. If I didn’t take great gulps of Dreamless sleep before I lay down at night, I would have the most horrific nightmares, all of them variations of Greg and Vince berating me for deserting them. For not saving them. I would wake up crying and shaking, the vision of their hands reaching for me haunting me all day. I’d had these exact nightmares for several years after Potter had defeated Voldemort, but they’d slowly ebbed to nothing over time. With Astoria’s leaving and Scorpius marrying Weasley, they’d come back with a vengeance.

At some point Pansy flooed in, sobbing. The inevitable had happened. Her lover had traded her in for a newer model. At least he’d settled some money on her, so she wasn’t destitute, but she’d been the sort of woman who’d relied on her youth and innate sex appeal to get what she wanted, and now that she wasn’t young, there wasn’t a whole lot left. She could, I suppose, glamour her way through life, but what a sad business.

“What am I doing to do?” she wailed, as I held her.

I had no idea.

“Stay here as long as you like,” I offered. “I’m moving out shortly, just down the way into that old house we used to play in, but the Manor's yours if you want it.” Sneeples would probably be overjoyed to have her here. His disapproval of my intention to vacate the Manor was obvious.

She pulled away from me to palm her cheeks free from tears. “You’re what? Into Grove House? That, that, _shack_? Draco, have you lost your mind?”

“Accio handkerchief,” I said and handed it to her. “Yes, yes, yes, and no. I’ve hired an army of carpenters, glaziers, and painters to renovate the place. I just can’t stay here, Pans.” I used to love these rooms; now I hated every single inch. “Not anymore. Once Astoria left, it all went to shite. Too many memories. Only the ones of Scorpius matter. I’ll take the portrait of my mother and some books, and really that’s it. I just can’t…” I left it at that.

She blew her nose.

“Draco? What happened that year, you know, when I stayed at Hogwarts and you—”

I waved a hand to silence her. I’d never talked about it, not to a single soul.

“That bad?” she said in a small voice.

“You have no idea.”

“Oh, my lamb,” she whispered. And another tear slid down her cheek. But this time it was for me.

In many ways Pansy Parkinson brought out the worst in me: the snark and the snide, the less than admirable qualities of my personality. But she was also loyal and she loved me, and I was very short on love and loyalty these days. I reached for her hand and kissed her wrist.

She shook herself, as if to shake off her former lover’s scent, and stood up. “Let’s take a walk. Show me the progress they’ve made on the shack. As I remember it, it was nothing more than a glorified barn with a bunch of rooms tacked on the sides.” She wrinkled her nose. “And it smelled of horses.”

“It hasn’t changed.”

***************************************

To be continued.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco continues his quest for self-forgiveness.

"Look, Barnes, I don't have all day. For the third and last time, I will lay out my proposal. Accept it or not. But I warn you, if you reject it, I will go to the next board meeting, and I will have no qualms about letting the board know who turned down a gift of a million Galleons."

I had no intention of doing this because that would completely destroy whatever anonymity I was trying to preserve, but as a threat it was a pretty good one. Barnes had just succeeded to this job, and was, I would imagine, insecure about his future.

I'd never had much respect for Ravenclaws. They seemed to me to be all brains and no common sense. They weren't even decent wizards for the most part. It was a lot of theory and spouting off about how magic works, but when it actually came to physically doing magic, they tended to be mediocre and lackluster. Magic isn't just knowing how to use your wand. It's five percent knowledge and ninety-five percent knowhow and passion. They intellectualized it, instead of feeling it. How this irritating tosser got to be head of St. Mungo's is one of life's greatest mysteries. I doubt he could cast a decent Alohamora. But I bet he could describe in great detail on _how_ to cast it.

Barnes had been Head Boy of Ravenclaw. A shapeless, non-descript fellow as a teenager, he hadn't really changed much. Still a shapeless, non-descript adult, he'd tried to upgrade his appearance with expensive robes and a fussy, over-manicured goatee. The goatee made him look far older than he was--not the look I imagine he was striving for--and the phrase silk purse out of a sow's ear came to mind regarding his robes. He was one of those intelligent types who alienates everyone around them because they can't help but bray about their accomplishments. He'd been the Ravenclaw answer to Granger. Except that she could actually cast spells and she has a much nicer ass on her. I really couldn't fathom how he became Head Boy. I can't remember him ever being able to cast a decent spell, but then his writing assignments were topnotch, I suppose. He was a couple of years ahead of me and, therefore, had escaped the carnage at Hogwarts. Nevertheless, my reputation had preceded me.

As it always does.

I ignored the even more hostile glare on his face in response to my threat. But at least he was paying attention now.

"Now, it's simple. My mother has just died," I waited for some murmur of condolence and when none came, I continued. "And she left me a considerable sum of money."

This was not true. All of the Malfoy riches had been wiped out when the Ministry demanded war reparations. My current wealth stemmed solely from my phenomenal ability to understand trashy Muggle culture and the U.S. stock market. The irony of a Malfoy restoring our previous wealth on the back of the Muggle stock market was not lost on me.

"I would like to use her money to fund a research project on eradicating the effects of lycanthropy. I insist on seeing quarterly reports on how the money is spent. No boondoggles to France or Italy to sample the latest vintages." I gave him a glare of my own, because the habitual flush of his cheeks hinted at a bit of a drinking problem. Ignoring his blush, I went on. "Other than that, I place no restrictions on how the money is used and who you hire. Naturally, I prefer that you hire competent wizards. May I suggest Bill Weasley to head up this project? He's an excellent curse breaker and would, I believe, have a vested interest in seeing this project through. There are a couple of inmates in Azkaban who are experts on the Dark Arts--Marcus Flint and Sebelius Temple come to mind--but I'm not sure how to obtain their release. Maybe you could strike up a deal with the Ministry. That's it."

The glare had retreated and a speculative sneer had replaced it.

"What would you want out of it, Malfoy? I suppose a full-page ad in the _Daily Snitch_ ballyhooing your largesse?"

That was another thing that annoyed me about Barnes. His voice had never truly broken. He had a reedy, whiny twang that actually made my ears hurt. Maybe his balls had never descended; there was an amorphous quality about him. 

"I knew you weren't listening. As I said in the first _two_ go rounds," I added with a not insignificant sneer of my own, "I don't want anyone to know who is funding this research. No one," I stressed. "Do I make myself clear?"

He leaned back in his chair and studied me. I studied him back. It would be a cold day in hell when someone like Barnes could intimidate me. Eventually, he coughed and looked away first. At that point I'd knew I had won.

"Why?" he demanded, which I interpreted as being merely for show. He was going to accept the money.

"I'm paying my debts, Barnes. It's as simple as that. Not a word. If I hear a single whisper as to who is funding this project, I'll know it was you. Although I’m not worried on that score. You have much more to lose if this got out than I do."

Which was true. Barnes was taking a chance and possibly jeopardizing his career in accepting Death Eater Galleons, no matter how valuable such research would be. However, should they come up with a ground-breaking solution, he would bask in the glory. It was a gamble, and Ravenclaws weren't known for being rash. He'd probably run a mental spreadsheet of the pros and cons and came out on the side of personal aggrandizement. _That_ isn't the provenance of any specific house.

There was a pause and then I said, "In anticipation of your accepting my offer, I've set up a special bank account at Gringotts. You have access and no one else." I thought that might appeal to his vanity. Which it did. A smug little smile appeared.

We were done. I stood up. I held out my hand and he ignored it. Ah well, I'd achieved what I'd come for.

"Good-bye, Barnes."

Before I could turn around he said, "Lavender Brown was my cousin."

"I'm sorry for your loss."  
******************************  
_To be continued…_


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still moving forward. This is being added to at a glacial pace. I apologize. Attending Leviosa inspired me to write this. Hopefully the inspiration isn't shortlived!

"If you don't stop packing, I swear I'm going to kill you. I've changed my nail color four times today because I'm so fucking bored. Not that I don't think you're gorgeous, but I'd like to see another human face. I must admit, Sneeples provides about two seconds of amusement every day. His outfit this morning was priceless; but how sad is it that I actually look _forward_ to seeing what insane outfit he will be wearing every day. I'm going completely bonkers here. I know you're not drinking these days, but I wouldn't mind having a pint or twenty or maybe a martini. Cold with a whisper of vermouth and about ten olives. Can we please go _somewhere_ to escape this mausoleum of a house for a couple of hours?"

We were at the end of what I'd privately called the "Break-up Circles of Hell." Pansy had cycled through being depressed, several crying jags a day, wondering what was wrong with her, and bemoaning the fact she was aging, to wondering what was wrong with him, nitpicking at his faults, grumbling that she'd wasted all those years on someone who picks at their cuticles on an hourly basis, counting her lucky stars that she still had a fabulous rack, and that bastard would rue the day he'd kicked her to the curb.

Six vials of nail polish were lined up in front of her. Her nails were a study of the great artists, if great artists had decided to paint their nails. Her thumb was an ode to Picasso, her middle finger a tribute to Monet, and her pinky a Van Gogh sunflower. The ring finger and forefinger were solid, which somehow set off the other nails to perfection.

I ignored her.

At which point she grabbed my wand.

"Pansy Parkinson," I growled in warning.

"Draco, stop. I really cannot stand another minute in this house. You've been marching through these rooms for days. Out of thirty rooms, you've chosen some books, your mother's four-poster bed, the chairs from the library, and two lamps. That says to me that there is basically nothing in this house that doesn't conjure up awful memories. So stop. Right now. Put down your wand. For Merlin's sake, can we _please_ have a night out on the town? I'm going stir crazy."

Move-in day was tomorrow. Construction was still on-going, but the study and my bedroom _en suite_ had been completed. I could sit by the fire and read, sleep in a room that wasn't crawling with bad memories, and take a hundred hot showers a day if I wanted to. I might be downsizing but that didn't include slacking off on personal hygiene, a conversation that I _wish_ I could have with Greg Goyle, a boy who never let soap within three feet of him if he could help it. This is what loss does to a man. I'd now give my right eye to be able to say to Greg, in my snottiest voice imaginable, "You smell like a barnyard animal. In fact, several barnyard animals. If you do not march to the shower this instance, I will AK you." Of course that was in the days when we could bandy about getting AK'd like it was analogous to a cuff of the ear. Such was our innocence. And stupidity.

I counted to ten to avoid snarling at her. I held out my hand. She pouted for a bit and then handed my wand back to me. I counted to twenty and managed to smile. I was still peeved at her over yesterday. We'd walked over to Grove House to check on its progress. I was quite pleased. It was coming together.

She sniffed, rolled her eyes, and said, "You're out of your fucking mind." Then she turned heel to return to the Manor.

"Last time I was in the _Leaky_ , someone threw a drink in my face. It wasn't the first time, and I intend it to be the last. Plus, I'm convinced that Tom might deny us service. I do not want to put him in the position of having to publically eject us, nor will I subject you to that sort of insult. Unless you want to party in some hellhole in Knockturn Alley, then it's a Muggle bar."

If I'd hope to squelch her demands that we go out, I was sadly mistaken.

"Fine. I'm going to get dressed. Meet me in the foyer in an hour," she said and Apparated.

I collapsed into the nearest chair. She was right. I'd become a virtual hermit, and I didn't quite know why. People had been shunning me and throwing drinks in my face for years. But I'd soldiered on, carving out a small but acceptable social niche among those remaining Slytherins who weren't dead or incarcerated. It had been enough. I'd weathered what I knew would be a lifetime of contempt, scorn, and hatred by others. So why wasn't I weathering it now?

I suppose it was the perfectly hellish trifecta of the last year: Astoria walking out on me (which was absolutely deserved); Scorpius' marriage, and my mother's death. My anchors in this life had vanished in the space of twelve months. This was more than just a mid-life crisis. I knew that. The buffers against my coming to personal terms in my backing of Voldemort were gone. I could no longer hide behind my wife's family, my mother's amazing fortitude, or my son's successes. It was now down to me. Time to run my personal gauntlet. I couldn't do it in this house. All of my childhood memories were now stained with the blood of Voldemort's victims. I couldn't come to terms with who I was in this house.

You'd think it would be the opposite. That their agony would be the stepping stone for that reckoning, but no. I wanted personal justice. A fair accounting of who I'd been and what I'd done. I needed a neutral place. I didn't know how I was going to achieve what I couldn't even articulate to myself, but this physical inventory of my parents' life had felt right, and it was with some relief that I found myself not wanting to recreate Malfoy Manor. I wanted to create a home with a future, not one whose past was so--there was no other word for it--evil.

Normally, I'm rather a social animal, but now I found myself in social exile--completely of my own making. Aside from my daily interactions with Pansy and my weekly Firecalls with Scorpius, I hadn't talked to another soul in three months. Not even Pansy could help me. Her blunt approach to life, never-take-prisoners style had probably kept me from nose-diving into catatonia, but she wasn't the answer to my problems, and, sadly, I wasn't the answer to hers.

She'd approached me one evening, not too many days after she'd arrived at the Manor. I was in my father's study on my hands and knees, mentally mapping out my plans for the garden at Grove House. The floor was littered with my mother's gardening books, spines split open to pages I'd earmarked. I'd carved out a sort of path and was crawling along them all, the ideas coming slowly but gathering strength as I padded along the carpet.

"What are you doing?" she said in a throaty voice. If I hadn't been so pre-occupied with studying a picture of the exact rose that had all the characteristics I'd deemed mandatory, I could have stopped her sooner.

"Trying to come up with a plan for the garden. You know me. I wade willy-nilly into something, get knee deep in extraneous detail, and then find myself in the weeds of the most astonishing proportions. I'm at the weeds stage."

Suddenly, the scent of her perfume was overwhelming. A nail trailed along the back of my neck. I looked up. She was wearing the flimsiest of negligees, so sheer I could see the dark of her nipples and her pubic hair through the fabric. Adorned with white frills and ribbons, all that frou-frou juxtaposed to the sheer was enticing and wonderfully erotic--innocence and sin in one delicious package--and it was totally wasted on me.

I stood up. Unfortunately, she assumed that meant that all systems were now go. Her hand snaked behind my neck and she began to draw my head down toward her so she could kiss me. She was so tiny, she'd had to stand on her tippy toes for her hand to curl around my neck. Her loneliness was as potent as her perfume, but I couldn't go there.

I stepped back and shook my head. Her hand flailed for a bit and then she said in a small voice, "Accio fag." The negligee disappeared to be replaced by an old cast-off robe of mine that I'd given her the first night she'd arrived at the Manor. Its hem dragged along the floor as she shuffled over to the settee in front of the fire. Because she was such a brave woman, she took my rejection in stride and faced me, not with anger but resignation.

"Pans..." I said in a quiet voice. "This would be a very bad idea. You _know_ that. I'm not who you want."

She took a couple of drags and then patted the cushion next to her. I hesitated. For the first time in weeks, I really wished I was drinking, because a couple of shots of Firewhiskey would be a Godsend right now.

"I'm not going to attack you. I promise. Come here," she said and patted the cushion again.

I sat down next to her and cupped her chin. As I turned her face toward me, I said, "I'm sorry, darling. It's just..." I left it at that and prayed, _Merlin, please don't make me spell this out_.

"Not a good idea. I agree. I just thought. You know, in school we were... I'm floundering, Draco. I mean, what do I do with my life?"

Yes, we'd been lovers at Hogwarts, but more because we were both hormone mad. And then there was Blaise. The third or rather the sexual nucleus around which Pansy and I circled. I wasn't in love with him, but there was a strange attraction that to this day I don't understand. Pansy never said so, but I think that she _was_ in love with him but had hitched her star to me because I was available in a way Blaise never would be. You could reach out and touch, but he'd never touch back.

"I know. Me, too." I kissed her forehead.

She chucked her cigarette into the fire.

"I saw him, you know. In New York. Two years ago."

"What?"

That he hadn't responded to my owl regarding my mother's death was inexcusable but not surprising. I hadn't seen him in years.

"He snubbed me." She'd closed her eyes as she said it because I knew she couldn't bear for me to see the hurt there. Pansy hated to be pitied. A trait I shared. She leaned her head against my shoulder to hide her face. "I was in Barney's shopping for a Christmas present for my ex and there he was. Still has that fabulous ass on him. You're no slouch in that department, but his? He was standing in front of a display of cashmere sweaters. He saw me; I was so close he could have touched me. He turned away to put a proprietary hand on the shoulder of an older woman thumbing through the sweaters. Next he leaned over to whisper in her ear, something that made her laugh. Their body language made it clear that he wasn't the chauffeur. She practically had an orgasm on the spot. Obviously his sugar mama."

"Surprise, surprise," I said, not bothering to hide my snide. If there were anyone who should have had "Gigolo" tattooed on their forehead it was Blaise Zabini.

"I assume the woman was a Muggle. I didn't get any whiffs of magic off of her. He'd glamored himself so that he looked to be in his late twenties. Not that old so that her friends could openly chastise her for cradle-robbing, but young enough so that they say it behind her back. He didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed."

"What did you do?"

"I debated thumping him on the shoulder and then slapping his goddamn face for him, demanding that he acknowledge me. But then I had to ruin everything by going all mature--"

"I hate that."

"Me, too. I walked out of the store. Fuck him."

"Fuck him," I agreed.

We watched the fire for a bit and then I said, "Come live with me at Grove House. Don't stay here by yourself."

She sat up to face me.

"I don't understand, Draco."

"I can't explain it. I just know I can't live here anymore."

Now it was her turn to cup my chin.

"I might go back to New York. I will deny ever saying this, but I think it might be home by this point."

I swiveled my chin so I could kiss her cheek. "You can stay here in the Manor until you decide or you can stay with me forever at Grove House. There's a very charming room at the other end of the house with the loveliest paneling. It gets the most delicious morning sun. It has your name on it. And all the _eau de barnyard_ is gone by now."

She narrowed her eyes. "You're lying."

I laughed. She knew me so well, and she still loved me. Perhaps that is what I was searching for. Someone who knew me and could still love me.

"Yes, I am. It's _almost gone_. Also? Bitch. My ass is every bit as smoking as Blaise's."

" _Almost_ as smoking."

*****************************

_To Be Continued_


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still moving forward; the mental iceberg is melting a little.

Knowing Pansy like I know Pansy, her claim that she'd meet me in an hour was, well, utter nonsense. Her make-up usually took at least forty-five minutes, and then she'd try on a minimum of ten outfits, sometimes fifteen, and then always, without fail, she'd wear something that hadn't been tried on before. Once I asked her why she went through all that bullshit. Why didn't she just try on the specific outfit that she _knew_ she'd wear anyway, and save herself a good hour? Which earned me a look and a roll of the eyes that said, "You are a very stupid man." 

So I took a leisure stroll around the garden, noted that autumn was stealing into the night air, that gardens at the end of the summer are a bit sad, no matter how well-groomed they are, and then staved off a bout of deep melancholy because this is a conversation I'd have loved to have had with my mother. The two of us would be walking among the rose garden, three or four garden elves behind us to pick up the garden debris as her wand twitched off the dead roses, she and I talking about her plans for the spring garden, a conversation that would completely have put the threadbare fall garden into its proper context. Now, everything is silent. This garden will never change again. It will, in a way, become a memorial to my mother. An imagination trapped in time. 

As these thoughts were inching me toward crying-jag territory, I Apparated inside, showered, shaved, donned something appropriate for an evening Muggle pub hopping, and still cooled my heels in the foyer for a cool twenty minutes.

"Ta da!" Pansy announced as she Apparated in front of me. A cloud of perfume wafted over me as she pirouetted for my benefit.

Her red dress was tight but wasn't threating to cut off her air supply, her lipstick and nails matched the color of her dress--bye-bye, Picasso--and her shoes were a very sensible black heel, kittenish but not overtly so.

"Smoking but not too trashy," I said and smiled. She blew me a kiss in appreciation. 

Pansy was one of those women who take a couple of decades to grow into their looks. As a teenager, her overblown figure had made her look like a tart in training. As long as she didn't overdue the cleavage, the lush curves of today hinted at good times as opposed to furtive hook-ups in closets. Plus, she's always had strong features--large deep-set eyes, determined chin, fleshy mouth, and a bit of a Roman nose--that didn't jive with rest of her at sixteen. Then she'd had a mature face in a teenage bombshell body. Now her body had caught up with her face.

At that moment, I wished so hard that we could have been more than friends. That we could have made a future together, but no. We bring out the best in each other and, conversely, the worst. Both of us are rather hard people. Astoria is a gentle soul, which I benefitted from for years. Scorpius has inherited much of his mother's innate tender self. I'd used that tenderness mercilessly in the beginning of our marriage to heal a nearly destroyed psyche. How could I have known that I would grow bored with her?

"What's wrong?" Pansy asked and tweaked the collar of my shirt.

"Nothing," I lied. "There's a place near the _Leaky_ that's okay. Why don't we start there? Have a couple of drinks and then move on. It's a gay bar, just so you know, but they know how to pour a pint."

"Anywhere, short of a shop that sells elves' clothing, is fine with me."

We held hands and bowed to the power of the Apparition as it whisked us away to London.

******************************

They'd managed to fix the signage since I'd been there, no doubt in response to the many unsuspecting straight men or couples who'd found themselves on the wrong end of a salacious proposition. With the sign blinking out "Cock and Bullwhip," you'd have to be blind or inordinately stupid not to realize that this was a gay pub.

The place was full of gay men with a decent range of ages. More of a place to hang out and possibly score, as opposed to a meat market. A smattering of fag hags were hanging on a few well-muscled shoulders, and a few straight couples were downing their drinks. Not that I'd noticed any of this the last time I'd been here, as getting totally soused was the only item on my agenda, but it had the feel of a neighborhood pub. You could find someone if you were looking, but if you weren't looking, then what'll it be? I snagged the last free table. As we killed time waiting for our drinks, I motioned over to the piano in the corner. I hadn't noticed it on my previous visit, but then I'd been drunk out of my fucking mind. Apparently it was karaoke night if the sign on the piano was any indication: "Free drinks for the brave souls who get their asses up here."

"I don't suppose you know any of the music, but you could certainly blow that guy out of the water."

A tall fellow with a lanky ponytail was belting out a Muggle torch song. He had a way of handling the mic and flipping his head back that told me he thought he was hot stuff. To be fair, I'll give him some credit. He could sing. But he couldn't sing as well as Pansy. Few people could.

"The ex has, I mean had, a thing for Frank Sinatra. I've parked my butt at probably all of the Muggle piano bars in New York."

I raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Muggle singer who is now dead but is considered the best."

"So?" I hiked a thumb in the direction of the piano. "When he finally finishes, or should I say if, because he's practically fellating that microphone, give it a whirl." 

She shook her head. That bastard ex of hers had robbed her of all her confidence. 

"If you don't, I will," I threatened. 

The look of horror on her face was priceless. I do many things very well. In fact, I can't think of a single thing I do badly, except sing. Then it's like all the banshees in Ireland formed a choir and started to shriek in unison. It's almost a freak of nature. I don't sound like one terrible voice, more like ten. 

"You wouldn't," she hissed. 

I opened my mouth. 

She stood up, snagged her drink from the approaching barmaid, gulped down the entire glass in one go, and then marched over to the piano, her glare in my direction increasing in intensity with every footstep. She came back to our table with the playbook and flipped through the sheet music until she found a song she wanted, and then waited for the microphone hog to finally cede the mic to someone else. 

Time, booze, cigarettes, and a whole lot of sorrow had taken what had been the purest voice I'd ever heard and battered it down to a husky, sexy contralto. She was older and wiser, and her voice reflected that. It was a bit worn out and all the more compelling as a result. As the song went on--something about a funny Valentine; Muggle are so strange because there is nothing inherently funny about valentines--the voices in the pub began to hush one by one, until the only sound in the room was Pansy's singing. As the pub grew silent, her body language grew more confident. She eased into the song with each passing note, so that by the end of it, she just fucking owned that thing. 

I wasn't the only one standing and clapping and begging for more. 

She blushed and dipped her head to hide both her embarrassment and pleasure. Like most hard people, her moments of vulnerability are rare. I savored that blush. Her ex hadn't ruined her; he'd just bruised her a bit. I shouted, "More! Brava!" louder than anyone else. My dear Pans. 

With a reception like that, lank ponytail fellow didn't stand a chance. As she flipped through the book and conferred with the pianist, I sense a slight movement beside me. I was just about to say, "Sorry, this seat's taken," when I noticed it was the man who I'd met the last time I'd been here. The Good Samaritan. The blond chap with the green eyes. 

He pointed toward Pansy. "Wow, Just… Wow. I never…"

"She's damn amazing, isn't she?" I paused to think this through. I couldn't very well say, "Her pure-blood parents would have had a canary had she'd pursed a singing career," now could I? I opted for, "Her parents were dead set against her taking it any farther than the occasional party. Sad." 

The Parkinsons were proof positive that pedigree didn't actually mean you had functioning brains. Their lineage was as stellar as my family's, and yet they were shallow, rather stupid people. Whatever you could say about Malfoys and Blacks, we were an intelligent bunch, morally deficit I admit, but as smart as tacks as a rule. As a child, I was honor bound to treat the Parkinsons with respect just because they were pure-bloods. As an adult, I treated them with a modicum of respect instead of like the fools and snobs they were because it would have hurt Pansy, even though I've heard her say a million times that they were both as thick as two planks. They'd been adamant that Pansy forego any attempts to make a go of the singing because pure-bloods didn't "do that sort of thing." She was supposed to marry--probably me--and trot out little pure-blood horrors just like themselves. Supporting your daughter's ambitions to be a singer was just not done; however, supporting a murdering megalomaniac in his quest to rule the wizarding world was just fine. Ironically, she'd become a professional mistress. I hate stupid people, Crabbe and Goyle notwithstanding. Their value as my personal minions outweighed their lack of I.Q. 

"She's, well, amazing," he said in stunned voice. 

"Is there an echo in here? I think I said that." 

He shook his head like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing and more or less fell into her chair. 

"Say, I wanted to thank you for babysitting me that night. I do appreciate it as I seemed to have totally blacked out. Not surprising given the amount of whiskey I poured down my gullet." 

"Yeah, I… I walked you up and down the alley until you said you were sober enough to get home." 

Now it was my turn to shake my head. "I don't remember a thing. Probably a blessing. I'll have to take your word for it. May I buy you a drink to thank you?" I motioned to the barmaid. "What are you having?" 

Not surprisingly, he ordered a black and tan. He struck me as that sort. Educated, obviously, but decidedly middle class. 

"You're not drinking?" He pointed to the lime and soda I was nursing. 

"Not these days." I patted my stomach. "Watching the waistline." 

This was a lie. I could have consumed an entire mastodon a day and not gain weight. I'd taken up running not because I needed the exercise or that I needed to burn calories, but just because if I didn't exhaust myself by running five miles a day, I couldn't sleep at night from sheer nervous energy. I took a closer look at him. His cheeks were a bit shrunken and even in the dim light of the pub, he had circles under his eyes, like he hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep in a month.

"Say, you look a little rough around the edges. This is none of my business, so don't feel obligated to answer, but is there anything amiss?" 

"Oh, you could say that," he muttered, but in such a tone as to not invite any further questions. 

Fortunately, our drinks arrived at that very moment and any awkward pauses were temporarily avoided. I raised my glass to say the obligatory cheers and it was then that I knew. Something about being face-to-face, I suppose. 

It wasn't necessarily the color of his eyes, oh, that was part of it, but it was also the expression on his face, the way he spoke. He'd roughed up his voice a bit, made it deeper, but he couldn't control _how_ he talked. Plus, there was that ever-present wary regard with which he'd studied me for the last thirty-five years. 

It's a funny thing about glamours. You can change great swaths of yourself, but there are some things that are so innate that you can't change them no matter how much you try. Like the exhaustion, his unhappiness. With me, it's my pointy chin. Not that I particularly like my chin. It's too pointy. But it's so me that I can never glamour it away. And I suppose that he couldn't glamour away the color of his eyes. It was too intertwined with his mother, his unique identity, his self. 

Fuck him. Fuck him squared. 

I slammed my glass down on the table. I was not going to put up with this. I had done nothing wrong for the last twenty-five years. I'd made reparations. I'd paid for scholarships at Hogwarts. I'd donated hundreds of thousands of Galleons to rebuilding funds, and orphanages, and charities, and Merlin knows what else. I was forty-three fucking years old, the war had been over for twenty-five years, and the Ministry was _still_ hounding me. What did they think they'd find. A slew of dead bodies stashed behind the sofa? A treasure trove of Dark Arts artifacts in my bathtubs? 

I stood up so violently that I'd knocked over my chair. 

"In the loo. NOW!" I hissed in a low but vehement voice. I didn't bother to see if he was following me because even if he wasn't, I needed to exit that room. I was so angry that I was a hair's breadth away from making all the bottles behind the bar dance on the shelves. 

Once I'd reached the door to the gents, I heard a, "What's the--"behind me. 

I turned around, grabbed his shirt front, and hauled him through the door to the loo. Luck was with me, it was a single stall and empty. I kept hold of him and kicked the door shut with my heel. I threw him up against the door. The jar of his head hitting the door broke the spell. 

Harry Potter. 

"How dare you?" I screamed at him. "If the Ministry has issues with me, then I want a formal inquiry. I don't want Aurors stalking me, following me around, and snooping in my business. You can just take that goddamn glamour and shove it up your ass, Potter." 

"It's not--" He struggled to get out the words but I wasn't having any. 

I gave him a shake and let him go. 

"I'm here with a friend having a drink. Is there any law against that? Neither you nor the Ministry have the right to put me under surveillance like I am some sort of common criminal. This happens again and you will hear from my solicitor. Do you understand?" 

I didn't bother to wait for an answer. I shoved him aside and walked toward the door as fast as I could without making a scene. Fucking Potter. Goddamn nosy Gryffindor piece of shit Auror. How dare he? I threw some money on the table where we'd been sitting--I'd be goddamned if I was going to let him pay for our drinks--and by the time I'd reached the piano I'd schooled my face. I might be seething inside, but from the outside I looked calm and collected. Being a Slytherin has its pluses. 

"Need to go," I said and kissed her cheek. "Awful headache. Meet you back at the manor." 

Of course, Pansy knew me. 

"What's wrong?" 

I was about to make another excuse when Potter appeared by my side. Her eyes became the size of dinner plates. 

"Look, Malfoy--"

"Stop speaking to me or I will break your nose for the second time in my life. Darling, I'll meet you back at the manor," I repeated and walked out the door. 

Luck was with me again. The alley was empty. Right before I Apparated, I heard Potter screaming at me, "Wait." 


End file.
